Meteoric Download Manager Floats Into the App Store

It’s no secret: Apple has Mobile Safari locked down tighter than Fort Knox. Whether for security, battery life or control, you’ll need a third party iPhone app to really get the job done when it comes to iPhone downloads. Thankfully, developers like digitalPoke have your internet interests at heart. Their latest iPhone app, Meteoric Download Manager, is a feature-rich downloading and media playing utility for the whole internet—and your iPhone.

Concept and Functionality

My iPhone app review of Meteoric found that first and foremost it is a third party browser. As such, it’s a fairly basic affair—excluding download capabilities, that is. The app bears a marked resemblance to Mobile Safari, with a simple URL bar, a Google tab (though this can be customized for other search engines) and forward-backward controls. It’s certainly nothing new, but what Meteoric Download Manager does bring to the table starts with the first in-app download.

Simply snag a media file—be it a picture or song or video—and the content is cached inside the iPhone app. The user is free to browse and order downloaded files at any time using the app’s robust file manager. Similarly, any saved file can be previewed using either the in-house media player or standard iOS playback. The media player, it’s worth noting, offers features comparable to the starkness of the browser: Simple play, pause, forward, and reverse functions are accompanied by a shuffle command. It’s not your iPod, but it’s certainly a convenient way to play downloaded .MP3’s.

Meteoric offers a heap of other features as well, almost all of them rock solid. There’s browser imitation, cache cleaning, private viewing, Firefox sync, Dropbox integration and even the ability to stream content via an IP direct-connect. Though feature-rich, I did encounter quite a few crashes with Meteoric on my iPhone, making the app unusable after ten minutes or so. Hopefully future updates will correct these issues.

Download Capabilities

Meteoric Download Manager

Design aside, how does the app fare as a downloader? On the whole, Meteoric met or exceeded expectations. The app performed well with every stock iOS format I could throw in. Using the download manager to keep track of swiped files was convenient as well. Sharing files is easy enough using the IP-connect or Dropbox integration, and downloads were typically speedy to the max. All in all, Meteoric definitely delivers where it needed to most, creating a great utility for downloading and managing internet content.

Overall Value

Meteoric Download Manager is not without its faults—the crashes and occasional in-app lag were a drag, to be sure. But the app promises a world of quality download management in only a few updates, meaning there’s no better time to jump on the Meteoric bandwagon and one-up your current mobile browser.

Meteoric Download Manger requires iOS 3.0 or later and is compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. A small expedite fee was paid by the developer to speed up the publication of this review.